Originally Posted by
Instant
The term red pill and its opposite, blue pill, are pop culture terms that have become a common symbol for the choice between the blissful ignorance of illusion (blue) and embracing the sometimes painful truth of reality (red).
The terms were popularized in science fiction culture via the 1999 film The Matrix. In the movie, the main character Neo is offered the choice between a red pill and a blue pill, with the red pill leading to his "escape" from the Matrix, a fictional computer-generated world, while the blue pill would allow him to remain in the world with no knowledge that anything is wrong.